The trend of small, focused, and efficient startups beating giant corporations to innovating new products and categories hasn't gone unnoticed by the big companies. Samsung is one of those hulking behemoths hoping to have the best of both worlds by spawning its own startups, and today it's inaugurating five new ones.
18 employees from Samsung's Creative Lab are leaving their Samsung Electronics jobs in order to formally establish the five companies designed to develop five new products. This adds to the nine C-Lab spin-offs from last year, which marked the start of this initiative within Samsung.
The highlight of the new crop of startups is the Welt smart belt, which measures your waistline, counts your steps, and tracks when you're sitting down and eating. It's joined by the Idea Printer, which sounds like a simpler version of the Little Printer, and a couple of software utilities for saving on energy costs and showing photos on your phone's lock screen.
Product development on all of these budding projects will be completed by the newly minted companies, which will then spin up their own marketing and aim to release something to the public in the second half of the year.